Before Christmas, I was in the market for a Colt AR-15 as I carried this exact weapon in the military… so it was more of a memento for me. At the time, these guns were available and priced at approximately $1100. Now that the ban on assault weapons is near certainty, prices have doubled and the assault weapons have now all been sold. I’m an American and will follow the laws laid down by my fellow citizens, but I wonder if Congress intended to put every gun on every shelf in the hands of millions of people at a record pace. Well, that’s what happened… Not only are all the guns gone, but all the ammunition is too.
There are now millions of more guns in circulation across America than before the gun debate started. In fact, millions of transactions occurred in December and gun makers can’t keep up with demand. Listen, I’m with the NRA on the issue of gun control. Guns don’t kill people. Sick, twisted minds kill people. There are very few accidental fatalities that result from carrying guns and massacre shootings are the result of sick people, not their access to guns. Let’s look at what we can do as a nation to cure mental illness before banning or limiting access to guns in America.
At the end of the day, while our President was campaigning against them, gun dealers across the country were recording record sales, not seen since the last time a ban on guns was attempted.
Never before had President Barack Obama put the moral force and political muscle of his presidency behind an issue quite this big — and lost quite this badly.
The president, shaken to the core by the massacre of 26 innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School, broke his own informal “Obama Rule” — of never leaning into an issue without a clear path to victory — first by pushing for a massive gun control package no one expected to pass, and then sticking through it even as he retrenched to a relatively modest bipartisan bill mandating national background checks on gun purchases.